


Overture

by Kate_Lear



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 13:43:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2695166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Lear/pseuds/Kate_Lear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short snippet on how John and Sherlock might have got together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overture

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fengirl88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fengirl88/gifts).



> Un-beta-ed, so please do leave a note if you see any errors. Also my first writing attempt after a long, long break and so, dear reader, please be gentle with it.

The interest of Sherlock Holmes was a delicate and uncertain thing for anyone to capture (at least, anyone who hadn’t been the victim of a particularly outré or gruesome crime), so elusive and fleeting was it that John took a pardonably long time to understand what he was seeing.

For his part John was captivated almost from the first moment they met: that unearthly beautiful face – the mouth almost incongruously full and sensual for eyes that were more sharply intelligent than any John had ever seen before – the mass of thick dark curls that made John’s fingers long to touch, the height of him hunched intently over his work like a bird of prey... if, when John and Mike walked in, Sherlock had leapt up and told John he’d just discovered a cure for cancer, or a new test that would revolutionise forensic science, then John would have believed him whole-heartedly.

On Sherlock’s side, however, it was harder to work out. John had thought that Sherlock was interested: that flirtatious _wink_ as he left the lab, his confusion and fluster when John criticised the mess that Sherlock somehow managed to generate in so short a time... Sherlock barely took his eyes off John the whole time they were in the flat, and when he dragged John along to the crime scene and proceeded to show off shamelessly then John knew what _that_ was all about: goodness knows he’d done the same in front of enough pretty girls – and boys, come to that – to recognise it when it was being sent his way.

John had never in his life been _pretty_. He wasn’t bad-looking – he wasn’t head-turningly stunning in the way that Sherlock was but he was quiet and steady and confident enough that he’d never had any trouble pulling all the gorgeous ones – and so, remembering how Sherlock’s cheeks had stained the faintest shade of pink at John’s spontaneous praise in the taxi, John was unstinting in his admiration of Sherlock’s deductions, until Sherlock was flustered and pink-cheeked again and the eyebrows of the officer in the room, that Lestrade bloke, had climbed halfway up his forehead.

But then they had their conversation in the restaurant, and John was left feeling like he’d missed something. “Married to my work” was all very well, but Sherlock had certainly been giving signals that it was an open relationship, to say the least. Yet to insist would have been arrogant and so John let the matter drop, albeit with several pangs of disappointment.

Or such was his resolution.

Because there was no-one like Sherlock for sending mixed messages: he’d said unequivocally that he wasn’t interested but then John would turn around and there Sherlock would be, invading his space and commandeering his belongings and generally demanding John’s attention like an overgrown cat.

Sherlock seemed to actively prefer using John’s laptop to his own; God only knew _why_ , since Sherlock’s had more RAM and a better processor, but since John’s hadn’t caught a computer virus since he moved in with Sherlock, and had even begun to run faster, then John was happy to indulge him. He was less patient with Sherlock’s habit of co-opting the nearest available receptacle for his biological experiments in the kitchen, though, and the day he came home and found bloody (in all senses of the word) _eyeballs_ in his favourite mug – their trailing ganglia hanging over the rim – he well and truly lost his temper.

‘Oh my God,’ he muttered, picking the mug up and turning it this way and that.

Sherlock, that bastard, didn’t stir from his spot in the living room. He was stretched out on the sofa reading a chemistry textbook in pyjama trousers and one of his closely tailored shirts, and if John had been in less of a temper he’d have taken a moment to appreciate the view. As it was...

‘What the fuck is this doing here?’ he demanded.

 _Now_ Sherlock looked up.

‘Oh,’ he said, taking in the situation with one sweep of his pale eyes. ‘Bit of an emergency there with some last-minute eyeballs. Too good an offer to pass up, really, and I’d nowhere else to put them.’

So saying, he turned back to his book, as though that solved the problem.

‘ _Sherlock_ ,’ John insisted and Sherlock looked up again, a faint frown creasing his forehead.

‘ _What_? I told you–’

‘I don’t care!’ John exclaimed. ‘Sort something else out, because you are _not_ using this. My own sodding mug!’

Sherlock sat up, setting his textbook to one side and John glimpsed enough of the cover to see that it was in German. Good God, how had this become his life, that he lived and was infatuated with a beautiful genius who liked to relax with German textbooks for light reading but who nonetheless couldn’t understand why John might object to decomposing body parts in the crockery that they drank from.

‘I was going to sterilise it before you used it again,’ Sherlock protested, ‘with bleach. There’s no danger of contamination; if you’d not seen it then you would never have known.’

‘That’s not the–’ John exploded, before a thought struck him. ‘I’d never have... hang on. Have you done this before?’

The hesitation was what gave Sherlock away, and anger bubbled red in John’s chest.

‘This place is a fucking pigsty,’ he growled, waving a hand at the various experiments in progress on their kitchen table, the piles of paperwork in the living room that meant John hadn’t seen areas of the floor in weeks. ‘I bloody live here too, you know, the entire world doesn’t revolve around you and your massive fucking intellect. I can’t believe I put up with this on a daily basis.’

‘John...’ Sherlock began, wide-eyed and startled, as though it had never occurred to him that John could possibly object. ‘I... you never said...’

‘No.’ John banged the mug down on the table. ‘No, really, just don’t. More than a bit not good, Sherlock.’

He reached for his coat, vaguely aware of Sherlock getting up off the sofa and saying something, but just at that moment he desperately needed air more than he needed to hear any protestations Sherlock could make, and he stopped only to check his pocket for keys and wallet before jogging down the stairs and out into the street.

The local pub was only fifteen minutes’ walk away – ten for a man marching in a temper – and as John watched the football match on the TV in the corner his anger faded with every minute of sane, soothing, _normal_ conversation washing past him, until he began to feel slightly ashamed of some of the things he’d said to Sherlock.

Sherlock was exceptional, and something of a law unto himself. John had known this when he’d moved in, hell, he now couldn’t imagine being happy anywhere else, and perhaps his rant had been a bit much. For all his cold intellect, Sherlock could still be hurt; he might curl his lip and proudly declare himself above such _sentiment_ , but John’s observations over their time together had told him otherwise. The longer John sat there with only his own reflections for company, the more uncomfortable he felt, until his discomfort drove him out of his seat and on his way back home.

John had fully intended speaking to Sherlock before bed, but he got home to a dark and silent flat and chewed his lip at the lost opportunity. But when he snapped the light on – in case Sherlock was lying on the sofa thinking and hadn’t bothered to get up once darkness fell, which wouldn’t be entirely unexpected – his mouth opened in amazement.

The flat was spotless: the glassware that usually lived on the kitchen table and in the draining rack was all washed and neatly put away, and for the first time since moving in the kitchen table was available as an eating area rather than a lab bench. Or, if John chose, he could eat at their dining table, since the piles of papers that habitually covered it were cleared and stacked at one end of it, albeit in a filing system known only to Sherlock. Even the pile of correspondence under the jack-knife on the mantelpiece was noticeably diminished, and John squirmed a little in recollection of his angry words to Sherlock before deciding that, as Sherlock had clearly gone out, the best thing was to go to bed and face Sherlock with a clear head in the morning.

In reality, morning had almost turned into afternoon before John saw Sherlock. And even then it wasn’t by Sherlock returning through their front door after having spent the night elsewhere; instead he announced his presence first by the splashing of the shower through the locked door of the bathroom and then – after enough time had passed that John had given up wondering how one man could possibly take so long to get ready, and had started to think that Sherlock must have gone back to bed – his bedroom door opened and he emerged. Sherlock was fully dressed, no hint of the sleepy softness that John was secretly so fond of, and he eyed John as he made his way into their living room.

‘Morning,’ Sherlock said curtly, going straight to the side-table and beginning to gather wallet and keys in a way that suggested imminent departure.

‘Morning,’ John replied automatically before adding, in the same breath, ‘look, sorry for what I said yesterday.’

Sherlock paused, his back still to John but his hands stilled.

‘I didn’t mean it,’ John admitted freely, ‘I love living with you, I really do. It’s just that sometimes... you know.’ He waved a hand at their now spotless kitchen, clean and shiny as though John had never walked in on Sherlock in a rubber apron doing ghastly things to various purloined body parts. ‘Eyeballs in my favourite mug, and toes in the frying pans... it can be a bit much.’

The line of Sherlock’s shoulders loosened slightly, and he turned to face John.

‘Understood,’ he said and added stiffly, with the air of a man who’d not spent much of his life apologising for anything, ‘and sorry. It won’t happen again. I’ve–’ he jerked his head toward the kitchen, ‘– made other arrangements.’

‘Thanks,’ John said, resisting the temptation to go directly there and ascertain exactly what Sherlock _meant_ by that. Sherlock was still standing by the side-table, the curve of his arse leaning against it slightly, and John entertained a brief but vivid fantasy of walking over and pressing Sherlock back against the table to kiss the soft plumpness of Sherlock’s lower lip. He’d loosen a button or two on Sherlock’s tight wine-coloured shirt and nuzzle the hollow where jaw met ear, inhaling the subtle, clean scent of Sherlock’s skin and his overpriced soap, and see if he could tug Sherlock back to bed for make-up sex.

‘Was there something else?’ Sherlock asked doubtfully, eyeing John, and John cleared his throat and dragged his mind back to the present.

‘No, that was all,’ he said, hoping he sounded reasonably normal, and at the sight of Sherlock looking set to gather his things and disappear, he added quickly, ‘But I was about to make lunch. Would you like some?’

It was early for lunch but no matter: Sherlock hadn’t had breakfast and at that moment John would have proposed almost anything just to keep him around a bit longer.

‘Yes.’ At last Sherlock’s face softened into something approximating his real smile. ‘Please.’

‘Great.’

And just like that, it was as though they’d never quarrelled. Sherlock abandoned his keys on the side-table in favour of curling up in his armchair with his laptop and eventually following John into the kitchen to criticise his soup-making technique, at which point John only thrust an apron and a sharp knife at Sherlock and set him to chopping carrots.

(Much later, when Sherlock was safely engrossed with a medical journal in the living room, John gave in to his curiosity and hunted until he found Sherlock’s ‘other arrangements’: a set of Portmerion tea cups, each with an eyeball carefully inked on the bottom of the cup, and laughed quietly to himself. How very _Sherlock_.)

\----------

It was a slow, delicate thing but nonetheless wonderful to see, and John watched Sherlock’s increasing regard for him; at first it was with more hope than certainty but gradually John’s assurance grew until he was all but basking in Sherlock’s attention. He watched for as long as he could: not to be cruel and keep Sherlock dangling uncertainly, but because he was only human and it was a giddy experience to have a beautiful man watching his every move, deigning to explain his trail of logic to John alone, and dragging him into a nearby restaurant for sustenance almost as soon as John realised he’d visibly begun to flag while on the trail of a case.

John watched as long as he could and then, when he could no longer be content with _only_ watching, he acted.

He had been considering for a while how and when he might broach the subject, and so it was no mere chance that led them to the evening of the successful conclusion of a case, with Sherlock loose and happy from the twin effects of pleasure at his own brilliance and a few glasses of wine with dinner.

‘Brilliant,’ John praised him lavishly, as they re-entered their flat, ‘no, I mean, really. Only you would have thought of them tunnelling through to the cellar the bank behind them, how fantastic.’

Sherlock turned his head, pleased as a peacock, but managed to make a pretence at modesty as he shrugged his coat off. ‘Oh, it was simple.’

‘To _you_ it was simple.’ John looked over at him, all ruffled hair and sparkling eyes, and thought anew how utterly stunning he was.

Suddenly the next step was the simplest thing in the world.

‘I was wondering,’ John began casually, as Sherlock hung up his coat and fussed briefly with its folds before turning to John and making an enquiring noise.

In lieu of continuing John took the couple of steps that separated him from Sherlock’s personal space, that turned this from brushing shoulders as they hung their coats up into something more, and from the way Sherlock’s eyes widened then he had a pretty good idea of what was happening.

And John found that, after weeks of uncertainty and dancing around the subject, here and now it was so terribly easy to hook a finger through Sherlock’s belt loop – brushing against the black leather of Sherlock’s belt, warm from clasping his hips all day – and tilt his head as he murmured, ‘I was wondering... are you _very_ married to your work?’

‘I...’ Sherlock’s eyes were wide and a hectic spot of colour had appeared high on each cheek. ‘That is...’ He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands: they hung uselessly at his side before he lifted them and rested them on John’s chest, before evidently deciding that that felt too much like a prelude to pushing John away, and he finally settled them, a bit delicately, on John’s shoulders.

John could count on one hand the number of times he’d ever seen Sherlock even half as disconcerted, and he bit the inside of his cheek to banish his smile.

‘I...’ Sherlock tried again, and finally got out, ‘No. These days I find myself not... not as married as I used to be.’

He looked nervous and aroused and intrigued, all at once, his eyes dragging over John as though Sherlock would devour him and his tongue darting out to wet his lips, and John was just preparing a dry retort when Sherlock abruptly leaned forward and down to press his mouth awkwardly to John’s.

Soft. Soft, and warm, and yielding: entirely at odds for such a forbidding man, and John lifted his hands to smooth Sherlock’s hair back from his face and cup his jaw, subtly changing the kiss to something gentler and lingering, until Sherlock’s hands had migrated down from John’s shoulders and around his waist in an approximation of a real embrace.

After a long, breathless space of time John drew back slightly, mildly surprised to find that only a few seconds had passed when it felt like his entire world had been shaken out and remade at this tangible evidence that Sherlock _wanted_ this, wanted kisses from John.

‘Alright there?’ John said quietly. Sherlock’s eyes were closed, and he hummed softly before blinking and looking at John.

‘Yes,’ he said, and smiled. It was a gorgeous smile, and the corners of John’s own mouth tugged upwards. ‘Yes, very.’

‘Good.’

Sherlock was beautiful when he’d just been kissed, all ruffled hair and pink cheeks and open mouth, and when he leaned back in slightly John didn’t hesitate but slid his hand around to Sherlock’s nape, sinking his fingers through Sherlock’s soft hair as he’d wanted to do for so long now, and kissed him again.

This time was entirely different from the first. Sherlock opened his mouth as he kissed John, and John had a tug of _lust_ for him low in his stomach, so sharp it made him gasp. He kissed Sherlock back harder, brushing his tongue gently against Sherlock’s open mouth and groaning softly when Sherlock made an inarticulate noise and pressed forward against him.

Things got slightly hazy after that, subsumed in a fog of desire for the beautiful man squirming as though he couldn’t be close enough to John. John’s hands wandered almost of their own volition: skirting over the planes of Sherlock’s chest, rubbing along the breadth of his shoulders and down his arms, and even gripping his hips briefly to tug their bodies flush against each other.

Sherlock approved of that last very much, as his knees quivered and his breath fluttered against John’s cheek; when John slid his hand between Sherlock’s thighs to palm him lightly Sherlock gave a soft, shaky moan into John’s mouth and John quickly pulled his hand away from the deliciously hard, thick heft of Sherlock’s erection before he threw pragmatism to the winds, burrowed into Sherlock’s pants, and just went for it.

‘We...’ John muttered, breaking away from the intoxicating heat of Sherlock’s mouth to nuzzle kisses all along Sherlock’s stubble-rough jaw, while he clutched greedy handfuls of whatever he could reach, ‘if you want then we could. Um. I don’t know. Take it slow. Have a think about things before we rush into this. That sort of thing.’

But Sherlock only made a pained noise, pressed John back against the wall, and pushed his hands under John’s shirt to touch the bare skin of his stomach. It was astonishingly erotic – because those were Sherlock’s _hands_ on John’s skin, large and graceful and competent, with tiny traces of roughness from his violinist’s calluses – but they were also really fucking _cold_ and John yelped and recoiled.

It was almost as good as a splash of cold water, and John drew a deep breath and tried to think. It was difficult, with Sherlock standing there looking like something straight out of John’s fantasies, all flushed and breathless and with a very obvious erection, but nonetheless.

‘Right,’ John said, trying to think but utterly distracted by Sherlock’s hands; he reached for them and folded one between both of his, chafing Sherlock’s fingers to warm them, before lifting it to his mouth and breathing warmly over it.

‘I think,’ he continued, dropping little kisses on Sherlock’s fingers while Sherlock watched him with bedroom eyes, ‘that we should lock up,’ he kissed the pads of Sherlock’s fingers, ‘turn off all the lights,’ another kiss, this one on the soft, fine skin on the inside of Sherlock’s wrist, ‘and then go to bed. I want to continue this on a flat surface.’

‘Mmm.’ Sherlock couldn’t take his eyes off John, and when John parted his lips to bite gently at Sherlock’s fingertips he made a strangled noise and said ‘ _Yes_.’

In an instant he went from a languorous creature who seemed happy to stand there and kiss John all evening to a whirl of activity.

‘Yes, I... yes, go.’ Sherlock took his hand away to push at John’s shoulder, before realising he had John backed up against the wall and stepping away to begin tugging at him instead. ‘Go _on_ , now.’

And John laughed but also made haste to obey, going through their night-time routines with all possible speed before catching up with Sherlock and almost dragging him across to his bedroom door.

‘I...’ Sherlock was saying, even as his fingers interlaced themselves with John’s and squeezed tightly, and ‘You should probably know that...’ and then ‘In the interests of full disclosure, it’s perhaps prudent to mention...’

‘What?’ John said, stopping at Sherlock’s bedroom door and turning to face him in hopes that this would help shake loose whatever Sherlock was trying to say.

God, Sherlock was beautiful like this, all tumbled hair and shirt half-untucked, and Sherlock gripped John’s shirt tightly with his free hand, gulped, and stuttered out, ‘While I’m not a virgin, my experience with the mechanics of this sort of thing is really more based on what you might call theoretical than actual, um, empirical data, so I just don’t want you to be disapp–’

John could have laughed: as though something like that could possibly have put him off when Sherlock was standing there looking all gorgeous.

‘Sherlock,’ he said instead, voice dry and one hand creeping up to unfasten an extra button on Sherlock’s crisp dress shirt, ‘don’t worry about it. I was in the Army: we’re all about the empirical.’

And with no more than that John steered them both through the door, kicking it firmly shut behind him.

\----------

Sherlock was _heavy_.

He was heavy, and all elbows and sharp collarbones, and how such a slim, elegant man could turn into a hundredweight sack of potatoes overnight was beyond John, but none of it mattered a jot because he was _here_ , in Sherlock’s bed, with its owner slumped gracelessly on top of John. Sherlock was making John’s shoulder ache and huffing hot, damp breath in his ear in a display of appalling cuddling etiquette, and John grinned up at the faint dawn light on the ceiling of Sherlock’s bedroom and then laughed a little.

He felt _wonderful_ , as though he could go and conquer the world – once he got out from under Sherlock, at least – and John wound his arms around Sherlock, hugging him gently in preparation to rolling him onto his side and off John.

The sex last night had been about as fumbling and full of false starts and lost rhythms as first times usually were, but none of it had mattered because it had been _Sherlock_ that John was in bed with. Sherlock, who (John now knew) flushed pink all the way down to his chest when he was having sex, and who loved having his throat kissed and nuzzled, and who had clung to John and made hoarse, half-swallowed noises that cut off abruptly as his cock finally pulsed hot and wet in John’s hands.

Much less arousing was the snort Sherlock gave now as John tipped him gently back onto his side, but all the same John grinned widely as Sherlock stretched and yawned himself awake. It was obvious to the second when his brain kicked in: Sherlock blinked a couple of times before rearing back and focussing on John, and grunting, ‘Oh.’

John eased his arm out from under Sherlock’s shoulders – that technique was clearly a rubbish one, he’d have to think of a different one for next time – and stroked his fingers lightly down Sherlock’s cheek.

‘Morning, gorgeous,’ John murmured, unable to stop smiling.

Like this Sherlock was soft and unguarded, a million miles away from the man on display to the outside world, with his hair corkscrewing wildly and his eyes heavy with sleep.

‘Go back to sleep,’ John said, twining a springy black curl around his fingertip as he’d wanted to do for so long now. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’

‘You stayed,’ Sherlock slurred, his voice hoarse.

John rolled his eyes. ‘Of course I stayed.’ He shuffled closer to lean in and kiss Sherlock’s cheek. ‘Where else would I want to be?’

But Sherlock made only a vague sort of grunt in reply and curled closer to John, wrapping an arm around him and tangling their feet together before relaxing limply and leaving John to press his nose into Sherlock’s hair and inhale the smell of him.

‘Well,’ he said, half to himself, half to a drowsing Sherlock. ‘That went faster than I thought it would.’

‘Mmm,’ Sherlock groaned.

‘Good though,’ John added, just in case there was a shadow of doubt, and Sherlock rubbed his face against John’s skin and all but purred.

‘We should try slow next time,’ John said, turning his head to kiss Sherlock’s hair. ‘You know. Build up to it.’

This produced a grunt of displeasure.

‘No, really,’ John insisted. ‘I’ve got some ideas.’

Sherlock drew a deep breath, obviously preparing for a rebuttal, and John continued quickly. ‘I was thinking it might be nice to... well. Take you out. Treat you.’ He ruffled Sherlock’s unruly hair. ‘ _Seduce_ you, even.’

Sherlock paused and then exhaled slowly, almost consideringly.

‘I suppose,’ he allowed, eventually, ‘that might be interesting.’

If John wasn’t mistaken then that was a faint note of hope in Sherlock’s voice, and John laughed a little and rolled onto his back, pulling Sherlock with him and settling Sherlock’s head on his shoulder.

‘There we are, then,’ John said. ‘I’ll see what I can come up with. Gosh, you’re going to be so high-maintenance, aren’t you?’

And as Sherlock made a contented noise and relaxed into John, heaving a great sigh and sagging against him, John curled his fingers through Sherlock’s hair and shut his own eyes, revelling in the pure physical pleasure of being warm and comfortable and having Sherlock’s bare skin pressed so intimately against him.

The interest of Sherlock Holmes might be an awkward and subtle and uncertain thing, but the care and maintenance of Sherlock Holmes would be a different thing altogether and John couldn’t help but smile. It would be long and complex, doubtless involving arguments with the Yard, night-time chases across London, and more bullet holes in the wall, but if John were lucky then it would also last the rest of his life.

\--End--

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Overture](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4815557) by [Podphile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Podphile/pseuds/Podphile)




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